Just weeks after Yandex sold its news aggregation and online entertainment services, another key player of Russia’s online ecosystem, Sber, has deprived itself from important digital assets.
A company called Novye Vozmozhnosti (New Possibilities) is the new owner of the music service SberZvuk (previously Zvooq.ru, acquired by Sber in Aprill 2021); the video streaming service Okko (aquired in October 2020); Speech Technology Center (acquired in 2019) and Sber’s cloud services subsidiary SberCloud (created in 2016).
The acquirer is a completely unknown company created a few weeks ago with a capital of 10,000 rubles ($125 at the pre-war exchange rate). According to media reports, these transactions aim to protect the concerned assets from the western sanctions which have hit Sber as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The details of the transactions were not disclosed, but Sber told the Russian media they were completed “at market terms.”
The new owner is “a Russian company not affiliated with the Sber Group; a market player that does not fall under the current US or EU sanctions,” says a letter of Okko’s general manager Sergey Shishkin to company partners which was revealed by business publication RBC.
“As a result of the transaction, Sber group does not exert any direct or indirect influence on the company’s activities. The transfer of ownership does not affect the commercial or technological conditions of existing customers,” says the letter.
In the past years Sber — the state-controlled financial giant previously known as Sberbank — was progressively transforming itself into a tentacular technology group. Its investments extended to ridesharing, online food delivery, e-commerce, driverless cars, online media, mapping services, artificial intelligence and much more.
